Why Fast?
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Why Fast?
March 20, 2010
by Rev. Deb Kielsmeier
You know, we are in the season of Lent, and March Madness; but Lent for sure. This is the second Sunday in Lent and Buck told me that during the season you are going to be going through a series on the spiritual disciplines, or spiritual practices. So my assignment is to talk to you about fasting. I am just wondering, just a quick poll. How many of you are really, really excited to hear about fasting? O.K. One, Steve.
Fasting…basically a little bit about Lent. Those of you who were raised in the Presbyterian Church probably know a little bit about this; but if you weren’t, it might be a foreign concept. Basically, it is the forty days before Easter and it is reminiscent of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness when he fasted between his Baptism and when he launched his ministry. If you ever count from Ash Wednesday to Easter, you realize: Wait. There is like forty-five days; or, this doesn’t really work. That is because Sundays are not included. Just want to let you know in case you are doing something for Lent. Sundays are not included because Sunday is always a day of resurrection. We celebrate the Resurrection every Sunday, so they are not included.
But basically, traditionally, during the time of Lent you took time—stopped whatever you were doing no matter how important—and focused on prayer, self-examination and repentance. Not really what we want to be doing most of the time, to be thinking about self-examination and repentance, but it is a good practice. You may have been asked: What are you giving up for Lent? Or: What are you doing for Lent? Anybody ever hear that before? What are you giving up for Lent? O.K. and that is a fine question, I think, to ask for Lent, but it only goes so far; it kind of skims along the surface. Probably a better question to ask during Lent, remember it is a time of self-examination, prayer and repentance, is this: Where in my life have I gotten away from God and his grace and how might I find ways to return? That is what repentance is, it is just turning. In the Hebrew it is shuwb and it just means doing a one-eighty. So how am I going to find ways to return to God with all my heart? And are there some practices or disciplines that might help me get back on track? It is easy— and I know this is as a pastor, and I know it is probably true of you—it is easy to slip away very unintentionally from God, to become really busy doing even wonderful things—serving, teaching, whatever you do. I am sure that those things come out of the goodness of your heart and yet we can become so busy that suddenly one day we wake up and we realize that, wow, my relationship with God is not really one filled with grace.
Through the prophet Joel, the Lord says, “‘Yet even now,’ says the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart…’” Return to me with all your heart. I would just like you to keep that motif in mind when we talk about the disciplines because, to be honest, the disciplines, and even that word kind of bugs us sometimes. It comes from “disciple” but, you know, the spiritual disciples can really trip us up at times and this is how. They seem really spiritual, but John Ortberg talks about this cycle, and tell me if this hasn’t happened to you at some point in your life. You hear a great sermon. Maybe it is on prayer or maybe it is on fasting or maybe it is on bible study. Whatever it is, you kind of go: Wow! You know what? I really need to be doing more of xyz (whatever that is), I need to be doing more of that. So you make this resolution to just try harder to do whatever it is to, you know, you were inspired to do, and then you get busy. You may decide to read through the Bible in a whole year, you know, kind of marking out the days. You might have a prayer list that keeps growing and growing and growing—you include everybody you know on that prayer list. Maybe even have a prayer journal, with tabs, like what you are reading, who you are praying for, what you are doing—the whole nine yards. You may decide to journal. Can I get a show of hands? How many people here really don’t like to journal? I have good news for you guys. You may think that, you know, spiritually you don’t quite have it together; but, as far as I know, Jesus never journaled. So you are in good company. I don’t like to journal either.
Anyway, you are really trying hard. Then you hear about this person who gets up at 4 a.m. to pray and you are like: Wow, you know what? I really need to pray. I am going to start getting up at 4 a.m. to pray. But you are not a morning person. In the morning you are kind of dazed and confused. Your mind wanders. Your husband or wife, friends, they don’t really like to be around you at 4 a.m. in the morning. Jesus doesn’t really like to be around you at 4 a.m. in the morning. But, you feel like you have to, you do. You get up anyway. It is really hard and it is exhausting. It is miserable so you feel like this must be God’s will for your life. So you do it. You just kind of try harder for a while but over time you get tired, you’re spiritually fatigued. So this getting up at 4 a.m. and praying just isn’t doing it. You are not sensing God’s grace and you are not growing in love. So you end up just, kind of, you know, getting up at 4:30, getting up at 5, 5:30, 6. Forget it. You give up.
You feel kind of guilty but you go on and after a while you come back to church and hear another sermon, this time about fasting. So you decide not to eat. No. But this cycle kind of repeats. You decide O.K. I am going to really try this time. I am really going to try. And the cycle repeats. Then, like with my friend, Lisa, we had lunch on Thursday afternoon and we ended up talking about our spiritual lives. If this ever happened to you: You go out to lunch with somebody who is a good friend, somehow the topic gets on “So how is it going with your spiritual life?” Where do you automatically go when somebody asks you “So how is it going with your spiritual life?” She said, “Well, I am not praying enough. My Bible reading isn’t that great. My daily quiet time is slipping so I am not doing that well.”
Why do we do that? We automatically collapse what’s happening in our spiritual life into how we are doing with our spiritual disciplines. But the disciplines are not ends in and of themselves. They are supposed to be ways that we can connect with God. They are meant to be vehicles of grace. We don’t do them to earn brownie points with God and they do not equal our spiritual life. Our spiritual life is meant to be lived in grace. Now you and I, I heard this from up front, you affirm, yes, that you are saved by grace, not by works; but somehow, even though we are saved by grace, we feel like we have to earn brownie points with God—we have to live by works rather than living by grace. Yet what God wants us to do is to live by grace, not by guilt, not out of shame and not trying to measure up to some standard that we kind of have in the back of our mind as to what a good Christian is.
O.K. Here is a measure for you. In Jesus’ day, if we were going to measure the quality of your spiritual life and your growth by spiritual practices in Jesus’ day, who would be the hands down winner? Anybody? The Pharisees, you are right. The Pharisees. When it came to devotional activities, the Pharisees were overachievers. They did not have to, but they fasted twice a week. That is what the Scripture passage is about. They were in love with devotional activities and let people know about it, but what was their attitude toward others? It was very judgmental and they were very self-righteous, weren’t they? Would you say that they were filled with grace and radiant with the love of God? Not really, not really. So that measure of “How is your spiritual life going?” equaling what you are doing in terms of your spiritual practice is a false one. In Matthew 5:20, Jesus says, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” You kind of go: “Wow, what does that mean? If they are fasting twice a week, should I fast four times a week? How is it that I have to be more righteous than these Pharisees?” But if we don’t equal the devotional practices that we do with righteousness, we can see that our righteousness is all about living in love. It is about living in grace.
So that kind of gets us to our passage for today, Matthew 6:16 through 18.
“When you fast (Jesus says), do not look somber as the hypocrites do (and he was referring to the Pharisees there), for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
So the Pharisees, who voluntarily fasted twice a week so that other people could see them, for all the wrong reasons, received their reward of people’s attention in full. Unfortunately for them the disciplines, or devotional activities, were a means of un-grace rather than grace and righteousness. So here is my thesis for you. That we begin, when somebody asks you “So how is your spiritual life going?” I don’t know if anybody does, but, or “How is it going with your spiritual life?” that you measure that in terms of am I becoming more filled with grace? Am I becoming more filled with love? Am I falling more deeply in love with my Savior? And I will just give you this permission, I am not sure I can, but here I go. I give you permission to seek out those disciplines that breathe life into your soul. That doesn’t necessarily mean that disciplines are easy or that you always want to do them; but if getting up at 4 a.m. doesn’t do it for you, to pray, don’t go there. Don’t go there. We don’t want another grumpy Christian that is better than the rest of us. We are really hoping for believers who are filled and radiant with the love and the Spirit of God.
So, O.K. back to Lent… It is a time that we explore disciplines, not because we feel guilty or ashamed or have to; but because they are vehicles of grace. They allow us and strengthen us to return to God with our whole heart, to fall more in love with God, and to grow in love. It does take intention. We may not feel like doing them every day or however often you decide to do them. They may be difficult but they are something like a training program. I like to think of this as if you were setting out; let’s just say you were going to run the Twin Cities Marathon next October. Chances are you wouldn’t just go O.K. I am going to do it and then just sit on your couch and eat potato chips until October whatever it is. You would go into a discipline of training, wouldn’t you? In order to strengthen your muscles to build up your heart and lungs so that you would be able to do something that ordinarily you wouldn’t be able to do. Well you might be able to do, but you would be dead by the end of it. So that is kind of what the spiritual disciplines are, if you think of them as a means of grace, as a means of strengthening yourself; they train us so that what we might not be able to do on our own, through the disciplines we are strengthened so that we finally are able to.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you struggle with patience. I mean, you know, you are impatient. You want to become more patient. You might, and this doesn’t sound like a spiritual discipline; but this is one. I took a class at Fuller Seminary with Dallas Willard and this is one of the ones he suggested. So you are just kind of impatient and you would just love to get that behind you. Well, if you are an impatient person you probably drive, kind of, you know, you are always wanting to get in front of the car in front of you. Pick the slowest car on the highway, get behind them and just drive behind them. After a while, that may bug you to death, but after a while you might begin to see that it is easier and easier. Or, instead, you know when we are in the shopping cart lanes, you are in the grocery store and you are looking for the shortest lane and then you look in people’s carts and how many items do they have and then you are deducting how long that guy would take. I have even been known to take my cart out of one lane and get into another one. But, instead, find the longest lane with the people who have the most stuff in their cart and get behind them. Now I know that is silly, that is just a small example and it is not real spiritual like prayer or fasting; but can you see how that would begin to train you so that over time you just might find that you’re less impatient and more patient?
So basically that is what the disciplines are for. They help us to open ourselves to God and the Spirit’s power. They end up shaping our hearts and our lives so that we might be more filled with grace, and more filled with love, and more filled with patience, with joy, with peace and with power. And who doesn’t want in on that? If you keep that goal in mind, the disciplines are easy compared to what you get at the end. What a blessing.
O.K. We have to talk about fasting, because that is what Buck told me to preach on. So we are getting there. Fasting is one of the disciplines of abstinence. I know that is a word that we don’t use that often anymore either, in our modern society. But when you think about where there are disciplines where you are actively involved in things and disciplines where you pull back. So, some of the other disciplines of abstinence might include: solitude, or silence, or taking a Sabbath rest, which is hard to do, or to fast. See how you are pulling back from things that usually engage you or fill you or keep you busy and distracted from God. So the disciplines of abstinence help us face and to somehow let go of things that have a hold on our hearts. They help clear away all the clutter in front of us so that we can focus on God. Then, through them, because whatever it is that we love to engage in is taken from us, we learn to depend upon God.
You might ask, in the area of fasting, what do I need to abstain from in order to create more space for God in my life? This may just involve, you know, getting away, turning off the radio, turning off your computer, spending time alone and allowing yourself enough space to finally rest so you can even hear God. What is it that you need to abstain from in order to create more space for God? What is it that is distracting you from your relationship with God? Maybe you have an iPhone that is constantly dinging and every time an email comes in you have to look at it. Whatever it is that is distracting you. What is it that has a hold on your heart? Is there anything that you cannot imagine getting through the day without? Can you fast from that in order to move closer to God? Those are questions for you to ask yourself.
A lot of times people give up sugar or other comfort foods because they find when they are anxious they will want to eat sugar, or they cannot imagine getting through the day without a Snickers bar, or something. Coffee or alcohol are things that people often fast from during Lent. Coffee is a hard one, I admit; I have done that two Lents and I am not doing it this Lent. But that is a hard one, I mean, you come face-to-face with the fact that: Wow, I am addicted to this stuff. And you really have to rely on God to get through. Spending—maybe you are a person who loves to go to the mall and hang out or just spend. It kind of keeps you numb. I think today, especially with young people, screen time, media, computer games, you know, facebook, texting, video games, whatever it is, that can really keep you distracted. So there is more than just food that we can fast from. I would encourage you to pray and see if God is nudging you towards maybe giving something up. It is not too late, even though we are in the second Sunday in Lent. It is not too late to think about, what might I fast from?
Now traditionally during Lent, people fast. If you have been in the Roman Catholic Church at all, it is even an obligation on certain days to fast. Then on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday you fast. Then on Fridays you don’t eat meat. So traditionally Lent has been a fasting period. But if fasting isn’t where you feel God is nudging you, go ahead and explore what other discipline God might want you to enter into to return more fully to him with your whole heart. Maybe it is beginning a daily prayer walk, where you walk around your neighborhood and people don’t think, if you are not embarrassed praying out loud and having your mouth go, just put a blue tooth on and then pray out loud and nobody will wonder what’s wrong with you. But there might be another discipline. I would encourage you to do that, but go with one of the disciplines. Buck will be preaching more and more on the disciplines through Lent and go ahead and experiment with them. If some of them don’t work for you, it is O.K. It doesn’t mean that you are a non-spiritual person. It just means that your soul is not fed necessarily by that discipline. Don’t do all of them. Remember we don’t want you to get exhausted. We don’t want you to become spiritually fatigued. Remember that cycle. But go ahead and be intentional in returning to God.
A couple words of warning about fasting. If you do decide to fast from food, like from a meal or two meals maybe on a day during the week, there are ways to do this and there are ways not to do this. First time I tried this I was in seminary and there was kind of a little e-mail that went out to all the seminarians and it said, “Some of us are going to try fasting for Holy Week,” basically. Well I kind of started on Wednesday of Holy Week and I was going to fast, just drink water, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then break it on Sunday. I lasted about a day and a half. I had no idea what I was doing. By the end I had papers that were due, I had examinations, I had stuff I was doing in the Easter Vigil; and after a day and a half basically I couldn’t get out of bed. I had a huge headache. I wasn’t feeling spiritual at all. It just was a total failure. Has anybody here ever fasted from meals? O.K. You have. Talk to Steve if you want to do that right. He’ll have some good advice for you. Talk to somebody who knows what they are doing before you fast. Make sure you get, especially if it is a day, like two meals in a row or something, make sure you get your doctor’s O.K. Don’t do it if you are pregnant. Don’t do it if you are going to run a long distance or drive a long distance or take school examinations or anything like that. But check that out before you go that way. It is always good, I think, to start small, maybe with one meal and drink a lot of water and make sure it is working before you go on from there. Again, I find that in years past seminary, I have found that just giving up certain things like caffeine or alcohol or sugar have been helpful and truly I felt strengthened and more free by the time Lent was over when I did those things.
Then you also might just search your heart and go: Where, God, do I feel that addiction? Where is it that something has a hold on my heart? Maybe it is the media. Maybe it is shopping. Maybe it is something. Can you fast from that and can you really rely on God through this period of Lent? When you do this and you find that you are dying for the cup of coffee, dying for the Snickers bar, dying to get on facebook, go ahead and acknowledge the temptation, acknowledge your discomfort—it won’t feel like a spiritual high—your agitation, and just sit with it. People sit with their pain when they are fasting. Sit with the thirst, with the hunger, with the emptiness, with the loneliness and let it be real to you. I know that doesn’t sound like fun. You might recall the forty days that Jesus fasted in the wilderness before his ministry and then say, “God, this is really hard. This is really hard. I really want my (whatever it is) but I want you more. I want you more. Will you please fill me? I am empty. Will you please show me yourself? I want you.” Then in the end I believe God really does begin to free us, begins to fill us, begins to shape us, so that what fills us is not those things of the earth that we cling to, but his Spirit, and his love and his power.
You may not choose to fast during Lent, but I would encourage you to choose a discipline and to use it as a vehicle to encounter God and his grace. I challenge you to prayerfully ask these questions: Where in my life have I gotten away from God? Where in my life have I moved away from the Spirit? How will I find ways to return to God this Lent with my whole heart and my whole soul? And, what can I do, what are the practices, what are the disciplines that might get me back on track, all without guilt, all without shame, all in the grace of God.
“‘And now,’ says the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart…’”
Let us pray.
Lord God, Lent is kind of a hard time, kind of self-examination, a time of repentance, a time of prayer; and, being the type A Americans that we are, we tend to feel guilty when we are not doing enough. I pray that you would work in our hearts through whatever discipline we choose to draw us closer to yourself, to pry us away from the things that have enamored us and captured us that are not you, that we might come to Easter fully yours, fully alive and filled with grace. We pray it in your name. Amen.